The biohack.me forums were originally run on Vanilla and ran from January 2011 to July 2024. They are preserved here as a read-only archive. If you had an account on the forums and are in the archive and wish to have either your posts anonymized or removed entirely, email us and let us know.
While we are no longer running Vanilla, Patreon badges are still being awarded, and shoutout forum posts are being created, because this is done directly in the database via an automated task.
The Big Hack (part 1: coating)
This first part will deal with coating and the procedure of implementation.
RESEARCH (more will be added as I learn more) :
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169433210016272 (Thank you @chironex, this was very useful when I first started looking into transdermals)
PROCEDURE:
The procedure in itself is quite a simple idea take off the skin and shove some technology in its place , but to be effective it requires much more than that.
1. To start you are going to want to reduce blood flow by whatever your preferred means are so long it doesn't interfere with anesthesia
2. Apply local anesthesia to the area where the implant will be and allow it time to fully numb the area.
3. Remove the skin as one would if he was getting scarification ( for those who don't know what scarification is :https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-H77DXL7lOk DON"T WATCH IF YOU ARE EASILY QUEASY!!)
4.create the necessary microscopic holes in the flesh beneath
5. place the technology (which have live epithelial cells bound/ grafted/ whatever you want to call it to it) in the area where the skin was.
6. Bandage
7. Wait for it to heal
COATINGS:
The coatings that I am currently working on is composed of a mixture of the following :
Chitin (Is known to help speed the healing process )
Chitosan
Hydroxyapatite
Collagen( also helps speed healing and is a large part of the skin)
Fibrinogen ( to help blood clot and form a scab)
a minuscule amount of hydroxyapatite suspended inside of it
9. allow it to evaporate
10. repeat 8, and 9.
Comments
Displaying comments 1 - 30 of 93
-
Quick shoving in, I think you're Step 1 was intended to say "so long as it does NOT cut off anesthesia to the area".
-
11. attach the epithelial cell sheets to implant and let them graft to/heal into the implantThis is still a WIP in and needs much more testing, I have posted it so that I can get feedback and hopefully someone who'd be willing to let me test it on them . That said this part 1 in maybe a 5-8 part series all based around one hack.thanks @jupiter didn't see thatNEW RESEARCH (or stuff that i didn't put in the original one)
-
Just trying to help. I like the idea, I am curious (I assume you may have found out in your research), any thoughts on what would happen if you removed the skin, placed something in it's place, and held it there, with say, a strap or bandage, for weeks. Would Skin start to grow under it, thus pushing it back up? Would Skin grow around it and then stop, regardless of if it bonded with the skin? What if you had something smaller, like a needle, that went below the skin layer, I think it's safe to assume that skin wouldn't grow back under that, but would the skin grow healthily around the needle if you were able to keep the area clean? I know it's a little off topic, but it seems a similar field of research so I thought I'd ask. On topic, you mentioned attaching to bones, in which way did you intend on doing that? Similar to most medical implants I assume? (Little screws)
-
@Jupiter the link I just added answers your first questionI don't remember mentioning bones but if I did it would be in relation to hydroxyapatite ( a major component in bones,) talking about a way to mimic the way bone protrusions work like horns and antlers in animal ( which are in nature transdermal).
-
You say you don't have someone to test on, why dont you test it on yourself? What stops your immune system from attacking and rejecting the borg transducer once it's in place?
-
@ightden I don't want to test it on myself for the same reason I don't want to get a tattoo in a different post I said that I am really young, I am still at an age where in the course of 2 years I might grow almost a foot If I were to do it on myself the measurements wouldn't be of any use because by the end of the year they'd be off you want to get this implant at age where you are unlikely to change much body wiseAlso, my dad said the same thing about this being the beginning of the borg when I explained it to him.
-
So a few things i have questions about. Why scarification? Is there specifically a reason to do that kind of damage? If you still have a foot to grow how old are you...and can you explain the goal of what your trying to accomplish and what the benefit of it might be? Also just for aesthetic reason add some space to the links so it's easier to navigate with maybe a header for what each one covers.
-
So how are you going to address the body's immunoresponse and eventual rejection?>"this is a simple surgery">is in middleschool/highschoolmfw
-
@meanderpaul you wouldn't actually cause the scar you'd just peel off the skin and then place implant in its place the reason being 1. so that it is in proximity with thing like nerves and blood vessels, 2 so that you have a place to put it where it just feels like mechanical skin and not a protrusion from the body, beside a new coating the end goal is to give people an interface with the body in, similar to how an Arduino by itself can barely do anything but you can add almost anything to it and make it so much more you can add to the implant and do whatever you wantP.S can't I am at the max word limit for that post@ightden you make me laugh you not only made a fool of yourself while trying to make me look stupid you also showed me how most adults will solely judge someone based on age 1. never said that this was simple surgery if I did please point it out, 2 I am in my first year of college I am 16 graduated(early 3 not 4 years) last year from high school and promptly enrolled in college at ASU(only here for my undergrad going to study abroad in Norway for my grad ) 3. If you don't know what I mean by you made a fool of yourself you obviously know nothing about recent research on transdermals @chrionex made a coating that he tested for a week and it lasted well, no rejection my coating is a spin on his that takes his and the furthers it by essentially speeding up the healing process and making the body think that it has already built the foundation for new skin cells(collagen) to grow into, you obviously also don't know what epithelial cells the whole reason that the implant isn't fused directly to the skin and instead fused to sheets of epithelial cells is because those are known to be okay and skin readily fuses to them because skin cells are a type of epithelial cellP.S you guys sure do place a heavy importance on age but when you can get Stanford courses on your iPhone for free education and intelligence is no longer based on degrees and age, it's based on willingness and hunger to learn.
-
>The procedure in itself is quite simple [sic] just take the skin off and shove some technology in.Are literally your words from the first post. Surely it's as simple as cutting off the skin and stuffing things in, you must have gotten your medical degree online too huh?You still haven't answered how you plan on combating your immune systems response to stuffing your "open source modular interface insert buzzwords here" device inside of someone, which is a seriously big hurdle for any implantable device. Fantasy or not.
-
There's reasons people bring up age a lot and most of the time it's because as you pointed out some one who's not done developing probably shouldn't mess with their system yet. The other reason is most of the time people who are younger have more fantasy inclination then those who are old ( not saying there aren't little big kids). So my understanding is that you are attempting to make a mounting plate for future attachments to the body? I wasn't aware you hit the limit for words. Have you considered maybe a small test implant to see how well it will attach to the body? Small scale then move up. What's the method of fusing to the object?
-
I am pretty sure they at least taught you how to readit is a simple *idea* but as I said it takes a lot more to be effectiveYou are not understanding what I am saying, are you?I'll put it in layman's terms for you: when you get an implant to make sure it doesn't reject you need to have it coated in a bioinert materialthe problem with transdermals are that even if it doesn't reject because it is bioinert there are microscopic holes between the implant and the skin because of the pathogens enter and cause it to become infected and reject the coating developed is made of materials that skin cells stick to and therefore don't have those holes NO holes NO REJECTION,
-
@MeanderPaulsort of a mounting plate doesn't do it justice it would be like calling a computer a yes and no machine while yes at its most basic that's all it is you can do so much more there are inputs where you interact with the nerves while there are other inputs the interact with blood and then there are some to where you can augment the actual hardware. but yes it is a mounting plateFusing the epithelial cells would be done at most 1- 1.5 days before the actual implementation you'd take the live epithelial cells and treat them as you would skin on a transdermal with the new coatingI was also wanting to test something completely different though cells naturally bind to each other using tight junction which are just complex protein structures I want to try to synthesize these between epithelial cells and the implant for a better seal
-
Thanks for dumbing it down for me, Dr. Highschool. You are right though, it does take a lot more to be effective. Way more than MS paint doodles and a dump of improperly formatted hyperlinks. But you've clearly got it all figured out like every other 16 year old in the world. NO HOLES NO REJECTION. except for all the holes in your idea.>more fantasy inclinationCouldn't have said it better myself @meanderingpaul.
-
@ightden when all you are throwing at me now are insults and crude jokes with no real problems presented and no real responses to what has been said about the science than you no longer serve any real purpose here I am trying to advance the fields of medicine, bioelectronics, and the community as a whole there has not been any big mainstream/ useful hacks for a while besides NFC/RFID and magnets so while I try with my open mind, and hope (you call it fantasy inclination) you can go on insulting me while throwing yourself down deeper into a pit of hyper-skepticism (paranoia), and ignorance.By the way @ightden what type of education do you have?, how old are you?And trust me you'd make a huge mistake to think that I am remotely similar to the average 16-year-oldP.S I put hyperlinks because it's much easier for everyone than if I would have all of them in proper MLA format because in that format almost no average person knows how to find the original linkWhere are those said holes?, Please detail them and like every good academic either provide why they are holes and how they can be fixed or don't even mention them.
-
>I'm not like all the other 16 year oldsSaid every 16 year old in the existence of time. I'll feel bad for the poor schmuck you convince to let you "cut their skin and stuff technology in".I'm not going to bother with point out the holes because it's like that book by Louis Sachar.Surely all doctors in the real world need to do to mitigate rejections after surgeries is slap some of your Magic Goo ^TM on and call it a day. Oh wait, they dont. Real doctors (you know, the ones who got their education at an accredited university, medical school, and clinical rotations) have to use immunomodulating medications and there is still a large risk of rejection. Surely you know better than them though, as you're not the average 16 year old!Not to mention the "neural interface", "blood interface", "blood glucose monitor", "laser death ray" etc, symbolized by sqiggles and random colors on your "schematic". Want to tell us more about how those work?
-
@ightden I have to agree with you there,all people think they are different that something makes them better than others but in reality, we aren't all the best drivers, we aren't all the smartest, and we aren't all right. I feel bad for you the poor schmuck who let his personal biases cloud his judgment enough to the point where he couldn't see a great development right in front of his eyesNow for the immunosuppressants, these medications are used in organ transplant surgery , not implants if so you'd e on them for your magnetIf you'd have read the whole discussion you'd know that this is part 1 of a series if you want to know about the other thing which a "laser death ray" is not and has not ever been included you'll have to stick around
-
Ok so this is going sideways VERY fast. First off I did not post any of my response to be used in any sort of argument so leave me out of your little fights that you so love to pick @ightden. My post was merely one to explain why we treat younger people with some hesitation. You may not be like the rest and if you are actually as brilliant as you appear through what you are researching and currently undertaking in school that's very good for you. I actually am jealous because I'd love to spend time in Norway. My posts to this are to get make things clear on what you are planning/trying to accomplish nothing more which is why I haven't given any true input on what to do. Back on subject now... so your device would in fact be more the mouse and keyboard to a computer then anything else (sticking with analogies), which is to say for input. You would then have some sort of external feature that could manipulate that implant I assume? Does that mean you have an idea for attaching said doohickey to it? Perhaps magnetic or a clasp that not attached to the skin? I use very official words if you haven't noticed ;) EDIT: My emoji didn't work had to come back and fix it.
-
Let's talk about your chitosan coating. I love that stuff. Been doing a lot of work with it lately. Can you tell me more about your process here? what is your solvent concentration? More importantly, what is your crosslinker? Painting on chitosan looks great and all but without crosslinking, exposure to the inside of your body will cause it to fall apart.Likewise, placing it in 1mol sodium hydroxide will do the same.To others: Do less shit talking and more constructive criticism, please. Some seem to have a tendency to just foam at the mouth at people, without outlining why. Most people here aren't medical professionals and that's just fine. I ranted quite a bit when I first got here, but I always did my best to outline the actual issues involved.Also, making a skin pocket and shoving things in is basically how magnet implants, northstar, and most mods work. Obviously it's not a cake walk, but if you watch some implant videos, yeah, it's a brute force method we're talking about.
-
Being critical and skeptical of an idea with more holes than Louis Sachar's novel is "picking a fight" huh? Lets not forget the magical "blood input/outputs", "neural input/outputs" "wifi and gps capabilities" "blood sugar monitoring", a sqiggily "circuit board" whatever that is, lack of any sort of power to run all these things - and no way to demonstrate this is anything but a fantasy?If I wanted to be on a star trek role play forum I would be there instead.
-
And yes, magnets and rfid are "brute force" but on a totally different scale than carving off half the skin on your arm and expecting good things to happen.It's just frustrating when you have people coming to the forums with ideas of turning into a beehive or a mortal kombat character or posts like OP and it detracts from all the real and realistic work research and advances put in and made by people on this forum.By all means I'd love to be proven wrong, do some animal trials / implant yourself on a smaller scale / or something with substance and show that your coating idea works.
-
@Meanderpaul sry for the wait just ate dinner I guess you could say that but would say the best analogy is a windows motherboard it has some computing power of its own but the more you add to it the more it can do and the better it gets but I guess this is best left for the next post a general overview not part of the series sort of like an intro paragraph
-
@glims 2% just like the first paper and @chironex used according to the same people and paper they both used 1 mol/L NaOH solution to set and cross-link the chitosan but I also just read this on crosslinking Chitosan http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0008621505004969@ightden the "circuit board" is not a circuit board it's an eID (electronic id) specific to the owner and particular implant the blood input/outputs and nerve input/output are for another part like I have already said and again if you would've read the page where we first started arguing about this you'd already know about the power source it's funny for people who actually get scarification they so something even more unreasonable in terms of getting infected than shoving bioinert materials inside of it, they irritate it to get the best scar possible
-
@ightden please treat people with respect . the golden rule is still a thing man. if you have a question or doubt that somebody knows what they are talking about BY ALL MEANS show them where they are wrong, and why you think they are wrong, and how they might find the right answer. but being a dick to somebody has never helped either party get anywhere .
-
The reason I have been trying to nail down what it is could play a roll in the coating. I don't think you were around for the Blue tooth headset implant. It got a coating but it wasn't the right coating. It ended up freezing up the "speaker" part because it was rock solid. If your transdermal has to be flexible and have moving bits that will effect what you use for a coating.
-
Aside from biocompatibilty and coatings I also want to bring the mechanical properties of the used materials to attention. It would have to have very similar properties to skin. It's well known that the material needs to be very elastic but it also needs to shear a lot without taking damage. I have not researched each suggested coating but from what I remember about a some of them is they are pretty stiff and brittle and would crack easily when applied to a softer material. Constructing wires which exhibit the same properties as your carrier material is another tricky thing. Elastic wires aren't easy to come by, at least reliable ones.The rather big nature of the device and the loads it experiences will get you some pretty complex tensions inside the material. Volume changes, wrinkles , shear, etc.Solid materials tend to perform poorly in such conditions. You have some elastomeres to chose from but that's it. You may want to explore towards woven or even non-woven fabrics. Maybe even a sandwiching construction of bioactive coated fabrics towards the dermis, backed by a some fabric coated in silicone rubber which builds a barrier to the outside world, maybe with circuits embedded into this part.At the beginning of the discussion testing materials was mentioned. Once you get to testing it, you really want to consider testing small patches of material yourself. like 5x5mm pieces somewhere on your leg or so. Minimizes the potential damage, can easily grow back and does not require you to rely on other peoples (which can be a big roadblock). If you thing that's not thrilling enough, you can put a tiny led and resonating circuit into such a tiny patch to make it more exciting.As for interfacing. Reading muscle activity would be quite possible given you are really good with low noise circuit design and got the mechanical parts ironed out. Giving feedback via electrical stimulation of the skin below it would be pretty easy. No way of tapping into an actual nerve bundle unless you have a neurosurgeon around. But muscles and regular skin sensation would get you quite far already.
-
@ightden Your frustration is noted. You don't think I get frustrated too? My point still stands. Bring something other than bitching to the table or why bother.
@Zwytechhacker Your coating process will still have issues. You will get a membrane, it's true, but NaOH is not a crosslinker of chitosan. If you read down in the conclusion of this paper, chitosan is not mentioned. I would suggest crosslinking your chitosan before applying the HA. @chironex and I have both noticed structural instabilities when using unlinked chitosan.
and another vote for bendy being important. Please refer to my blurb from a while back when someone talked about puting hardware where their appendix used to be.
http://forum.biohack.me/discussion/comment/5035#Comment_5035 -
@glims thanks didn't know that, I'll try crosslinking it by heating it to 140(F) (or 60C) in the presence of potassium persulfate to crosslink it as a step five after the 1 mol soak in NaOH, I'll also try just heating no pre-soak, and I'll try the method that it already up after I am done with the tests I'll tell you the results for further discussion and improvement,
-
@ThomasEgi flexibility has been noted, As for the 5x5 I'll try the implant and tests As soon as I have the money and time
-
Is your wiring used solely for data transmission? Or is it also transmitting power? If it's just data transmission, go for wireless. The less cutting you do, the happier the body is.@glims @chironex What have you all used to crosslink chitosan, if you've done any experiments with crosslinked chitosan?In this paper(link), it looks like they used glutaraldehyde and epichlorhydrin, henceforth referred to as ECH(Page 2, bottom paragraph, left column). The ECH may cause the crosslinking to be porous, as they didn't explicitly mention adding an agent to promote porosity in the samples prepared with ECH, while they did for the samples prepared with glutaraldehyde. But that's something chironex or glims could answer better than I could. Will the HA stop the chitosan from breaking down in the body?Another thing to be aware of during your implants is the placement of nerves. And arteries for that matter. Damaging either will severely mess you up. So steer clear of the face. I also highly recommend avoiding interfaces between the circulatory system and technology. Biocompatibility is just the start of the problems you have to deal with when messing with that. I can lay out why in more detail once that becomes a more immediate issue
Displaying comments 1 - 30 of 93